


The Great Unknown

by halotolerant



Category: Colditz (1972)
Genre: Biting, M/M, Prisoner of War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:46:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pat doesn't know what the hell he's doing</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> In my earlier, much longer Pat/Dick fic 'With the Wild Geese' I gave a casual mention to Pat discovering Dick liked being bitten. I felt this merited revisiting *g* This should make sense as a standalone, but if you want to see more of them and what happens to them in my head after this, that fic will provide.

Pat doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He – the one who had always begun studying for his exams weeks before his fellow-students (he who called it ‘studying’ rather than ‘cribbing’ or ‘books’, because his school had been the kind that taught information before affectation), the one who has forever favoured planning over improvisation – is holding his breath and _hoping_ , because in this he has no certainty at all. 

He puts his best guess into action, and Dick’s head goes back against the stone wall of the stairwell, his mouth - his beautiful, elegant mouth - falling open and a sound catching as it comes from his throat, a half-choked high-pitched whimper. 

Pat tries to make his hand repeat precisely the same movement. Dick’s breathing quickens, and Pat can see sweat beading in the hollow at the base of his throat, skin moving as Dick writhes, his eyes fluttering shut. They aren’t undressed, not even close, but Dick never does up his top buttons if he can avoid it – it’s a familiar sight, that skin, it shouldn’t move him as it does. 

Leaning forward, Pat presses his lips to the space, to the thin skin between the delicate tendons. 

He’s kissed Dick’s mouth, his cheeks, his forehead, and the crown of his head through his soft hair, and once his hand, a gentle brush of his lips against the knuckles, almost courtly, for all it made Dick’s eyes darken.

This is kissing Dick’s body, and if that distinction makes no sense and should make no difference, it still does anyway.

Dick’s skin tastes of salt and cheap soap and isn’t very clean - they aren’t, they can’t be. This close to each other, the reek of their clothes might seem unbearably high were they not by now so desperately used to it, not just in each other but everyone, the simple odorous reality of human bodies. 

Dick’s hand goes into his hair, pressing him in, fixing his mouth there on his neck. 

Animals know each other by scent, and here, now, pushing together, panting, rutting, Pat feels like some kind of beast and does not dislike it. The blood and heat rise in his skin, thrumming through him, making him yearn for things that, just now, right now, seem entirely natural and perfectly obvious. 

He never understood, not until Dick Player started touching him – just merest brushes to begin with, months of them, apparently innocent of their effect as he was innocent about little else – never understood how a person might lose control this way, to this. 

Pat doesn’t know what he’s doing – he’s never done this, never had it done to him, and now here he is, uncertain when his instincts gained the upper hand, impulse ruling him as never before. 

And it has given him this; Dick in his arms, gasping and wriggling and coming apart. He is even more beautiful like this, and Pat is aching in places he never understood he possessed, trembling with it. 

Yet he can still control himself, just. 

Knows that he has to, knows that to surrender utterly now, to do what he wants and say all he feels would be an intimacy beyond what he can stand, even with this man. Especially with this man, who for all his sighing, for all the way he’ll hug anyone for half a reason, remains somehow essentially untouchable. 

Pat can make his hips still. He can keep them away from Dick’s thigh, which Dick has inconveniently bent forwards so it almost brushes Pat’s groin, so close they are standing together. 

This is about Dick, about his pleasure, about him feeling something good after so long so sick and so miserable and Pat cannot translate in any other comprehensible way how he feels about this man’s body except that he saved it, he nursed it, he loves it, and so of course it is precious and this desire to push, to consume, it is part of that. 

“Pat, please...”Dick is murmuring. “Oh, yes, fuck, please...” 

It’s the profanity, perhaps, said so neatly and so kindly – Dick knows exactly what he’s about, that much is certain; that much Pat has known, or guessed, since the beginning. 

Dick keeps his secrets close, silent and private. Pat can respect that – he does the same. 

But this much is clear: Dick has done this before. 

Pat has been moving his lips almost without thinking of it, kissing gently around Dick’s neck. 

Now, he bites him. 

And startles backwards, with a fear so rapid it takes his breath away, a wave of cold horror. 

“I’m sorry!” he says, broken, blinking, trying to think, trying to dredge out the words to explain why the hell he should have wanted to... There’s a mark on Dick’s neck now, a little ring of red teeth marks, right on the arch of the tendon; Pat’s stomach twists. 

Dick looks dismayed, and Pat ducks his head; he should never have allowed this, never have let himself be tempted, never fooled himself than when it came to Dick Player he had any defences worth anything. 

“Pat?” 

Dick is moving towards him, and Pat backs up as far as he can, but they’re in a narrow alcove and Dick catches him in a few steps. 

Dick is dishevelled, his trousers open, his shirt undone and mostly un-tucked. His skin is flushed, his cock dark and fully erect – Pat has seen him naked when they wash, and managed to be at least superficially indifferent but he’ll never do that again, never be able to un-see this. 

“Pat, what’s wrong?” 

Pat licks his lips – no point in being a coward as well as everything else: “I hurt you.”

Dick frowns at him for a moment, as if confused. Then he shakes his head. 

“If you hurt me, I’ll let you know about it. I don’t know what you think you...” He blinks, and raises a hand to rub at his neck, and Pat wonders if he’s ever had to deal with this before, with someone who would act in such a way.

Dick steps forwards again; there’s a slow smile building on his face, not smug or amused, something deeper than that, something like the smile he gave Pat the first time they kissed, something that looks bizarrely and inexplicably like gratitude.

Soon he is so close that they are touching again, and Dick, who is still warm, still hard, is leaning in, kissing Pat’s lips quickly before bending to bring his mouth to Pat’s ear and whisper. 

“Bite me all you want.”

He has clasped Pat’s hand, and is bringing it back up to his crotch; Pat shivers as he processes what he can feel there, the heat of him, the tense, soft skin, Dick leaking and wet although not yet finished –whether some other men do that too Pat has no idea, although it doesn’t seem to worry Dick at all.

Dick, brazen, shameless – without shame, without fear of this, offering it like something clean and bright and wonderful. 

Wanting this from Pat, of all things, of all people. 

Pat cannot love him. He cannot love him, he will not, he must not. But perhaps it is safe enough to thank the universe in general that the world has Dick Player in it, and that for now, at least, he is at his side. 

Dick’s kisses are growing loose and weak, his mouth more occupied with the low grumbling groan that peaks and falls with each movement of Pat’s hand. 

“Pat!” Dick is murmuring, “Pat, please...”

The asking, the yearning... It has been Pat’s joy for so many years, to give people what they need, to ease them, and to have those words, said like this, said by this man...

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but thankfully Dick seems to like what he can manage. Pat moves again, speeding up, aware that his hand is gliding more smoothly now with the increasing wetness, and finally it comes, the sharp jerk of Dick’s hips and the sudden liquid. Pat leans in, breathes deeply and gives in and bites him, teeth to the meat of his shoulder, hard, desperate, and Dick cries out brokenly, and Pat shivers and feels himself climax in his trousers, untouched.

“Pat...” Dick is murmuring, over and over, as if he never stopped, as Pat, panting, regains awareness. Dick is reaching out for him, kissing him, hands smoothing over his neck and shoulders. “Pat, let me... I could do that for you, Pat.”

Pat steps back, aware that he is breathing too fast, that his face is red, that his heart is threatening to shake loose in his chest, and shakes his head. “No time. They’ll have missed us as it is.”

Dick stares at him a moment; he looks frustrated, perhaps, but there’s a wonder in his eyes as well. 

“Aren’t you going to let me do anything for you?” 

Pat laughs. “What do you suppose this has been? I...” he doesn’t have the words, but he can try. “You let me... you give me more...” He takes a deep breath. “I appreciate this.”

Dick frowns and seems about to speak, when there’s a sound on the stairs, a distant call of “Scramble!” and Pat hastily helps Dick straighten his clothes before following him down the stairs to quarters. 

Dick keeps his collar buttoned, the rest of the evening, but later, after supper, as they sit smoking, he slowly lifts one long finger to slide under the fabric, rubbing at a very specific part of his neck, smiling slightly into the distance.

Pat takes two long drags of his cigarette before he speaks, and when he does he is glad to hear that his voice is almost level.

“Are you alright?”

Dick looks at him, smiles.

“Sunburn, maybe,” he says lightly, and raises his hand to his mouth, sucking in the tips of two fingers, tongue licking out pink as a cat’s, before reaching back to rub the bruised skin with the moisture. 

Pat doesn’t think he can speak safely again, so he doesn’t try. He finds that in gritting his teeth he has bitten the cigarette so hard that the filter has come off in his mouth, and busies himself throwing the whole thing away. 

“You don’t want to make sore skin wet, it’ll chafe more then, catch you all the time,” Simon Carter suggests helpfully from three feet away where he’s plaiting rope. 

“It’ll remind me about doing it again,” Dick says softly. 

“Not to do it, you mean?” 

“Something like that,” Dick answers. He’s still looking at Pat, smiling, but not quite as relaxed as his body language is composed to suggest – he’s very alert under all that languor, although why Pat can’t fathom. 

“Pat’ll have an idea how to treat it, he’s the expert,” Simon offers. 

“Not in this,” Pat says, more sharply than he means, and gets up from the table, pacing to the window, staring out at blackness, at nothing. 

There’s nowhere to hide in the dorm, not after hours when they’re locked in, and he’s not sure when that became half the point of tunnelling - to escape simply into darkness, to find some privacy, to believe that he can get Dick Player away from him or himself away from Dick Player before, inevitably, Dick leaves him anyway.

Pat doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He has no idea at all what is going to happen.


End file.
